Tree and wire damage: Cleanup takes days in North Buffalo community

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – A tree collapses in a North Buffalo neighborhood, but it takes days for anyone to show up to clean it up or repair the damage it caused.

Imagine coming home to find a fallen tree in your yard and electrical wires everywhere. That’s what residents discovered Saturday.

So they contacted Call 4 Action.

Charlotte Hall, who lives in an apartment building in North Buffalo, said she went out and came home to the mess. She wasn’t sure if the lines running across the parking lot were cables, phone lines or something else.

National Grid discovered that these were actually cable lines owned by Spectrum Cable. Call 4 Action reached out to National Grid and they told us that it was not their responsibility to clean up these lines, but that it would be up to Charter Communications, Spectrum’s parent company.

Call 4 Action also reached out to Charter Communications, who told us they never received an initial complaint over the weekend and thanked News 4 for alerting them to the issue. Spectrum sent a technician to the area on Wednesday.

“I knew if I called Call 4 Action, someone would hear me,” Hall said. “My biggest concern was not getting hurt or hurting anyone else.”

For nearly five days, Charlotte says she called multiple utilities and suppliers to find out what was happening and what the cleanup process would be. She then contacted Call 4 Action and we responded immediately. A few hours later, a technician was dispatched to the site. The technician was able to run new cable lines from a house to a power pole so that the area’s cable could be restored.

The tree’s cleanup will be the responsibility of the property owner. A city spokesperson told us it likely won’t be the city’s responsibility since it’s private property.